The Sun Never Sets….

Very quietly, while I was far away from the office, getting ready for bed just before midnight at the Park Plaza Victoria after an action-packed day of meetings at the Microsoft UK Reading campus, Jono, Steve, Noah and the rest of the HV team pulled the trigger on the next big chapter in our consumer health journey.

HealthVault is now available to … everyone!

I know, I said it’d just be Germany. But right now, pretty much anyone anywhere, across the world, can create a free HealthVault account and start managing health and wellness for themselves and their loved ones. Now, before I get too excited, this was only phase one of a process that will take a while to complete --- for example, when you visit http://healthvault.com you’ll see that there are only four languages and three regions explicitly listed. But the service is open, and the privacy policy and terms of use support worldwide access --- so give it a try, and tell your (international) friends to give it a shot as well.***

This new availability is directly aligned with the emergence we’ve seen over the last couple of years of a new kind of healthcare developer; one that combines differentiated IP with “last-mile” services on top of HealthVault to deliver high-value, fast-to-market, repeatable wins. Probably the best example of this comes from our good friends at Get Real Consulting, whose Instant PHR product has driven dozens of great, successful HealthVault-based solutions.

Going forward --- we’ll be focusing our energy on partners like GRC that use HV as an enabler for their success. We’re actively seeking great developers targeting things like chronic disease management, self- and family-care, incentive-based wellness programs, and patient workflow (things like sharing images and streamlining registration). And we’re supporting those developers with a new, streamlined business model to support scalable growth of the service – a structure that makes it easy to get started and directly aligns payment with value.

And of course, all of this overseas activity has made me a Bing Translate virtuoso, and introduced me to hours I haven’t seen since coding all-nighters back in the day. It’s been fantastic to get to know the great Microsoft teams in the field, and a whole new set of partners that are completing the pictures we’re trying so hard to paint. It is an incredibly exciting time to be part of the HealthVault community.

*** Note for USA users --- we are restricted to the US version of the service right now. Anyone outside of the USA can choose “German” or “United Kingdom” from the menu at the top-right to use the worldwide instance. This will all resolve over the next few months.